Opinion on New Voice Overs for Heroes

[ChocoboKnight88]

I just want to start off by complimenting the creators of this fine mod. Congratulations on keeping it going. I used to mod this game ages ago on the now dead "Rotwk: Director's Cut" and I rememeber hearing about it years ago. I remember looking at the first images of the Lothlorien Faction as it's unique castle set-up and fell in love with it! I was delighted to see you guys are still going after all this time!

Down to business however... I'll admit I'm a little irked by the fact that the Heroes in the game that already had lines have had their voices replaced with lines from the movie. I mean I understand it when we are dealing with new heroes like Thorin and such but I feel that the old heroes (As far as voice overs) should have been left alone.

I understand it's likely that most of the staff are German but native speakers like myself get removed from the immersion when Theoden starts talking about Eowyn and how he should have acted more like a father in the middle of battle. Or when Haldir talks about the Galadhrim have had no dealings with the Dwarves since the Dark Days, when there are none on the map. I could go on...

I request that either the voices of the old heroes be reverted to their original lines or have them be played under special conditions. Haldir's aformentioned line could be played when passing Allied Dwarves for the first (and only) time in a match. This like that would be a better use of those lines.

What do you guys think?

[Fredius]

I agree. The reason that they removed the voices from the older heroes is because in the German version the voice actor of the hero is not the same from the movie, while in the English version it is. I'm willing to change the codes of the heroes for the English version, to save the team some time with this hassle.

[Julio229]

I can't agree. My version is Spanish, and as much as I like the voices (which are pretty good), I love being able to listen to Sean Bean or Ian McKellen in the game. I don't find the things that they say to be so unfitting, and it is funny when you hear Bilbo saying "There's an Army of Elves out there", and there's actually one sieging your fortress. The game would lose so much flavor for me. What's more, I believe that to have all those movie voices, a ton of work had to be done, and it would not be fair to throw that to the trash now.

[Walküre]

I personally don't mind the current sounds and I definitely endorse the choice of having implemented mainly LOTR/Hobbit-based lines.

Are you really sure that all the vanilla lines were made by the same actors of the films? By the way, as far as I remember, most of them were certainly more situational and fitting for the whole context of the game (mostly centred on battles for the obvious reasons), but some were also really 'elementary', if not quite poor. Just to provide examples: Galadriel's 'We have to save Middle-earth' and 'Go now, friends...', or Elrond's 'Come on, Elves...' and others of the same kind.

I'm not at all saying that they were terrible, but the current ones, coming directly from the cinematographic adaptations, manage to recreate the LOTR trilogy atmosphere much better than they would otherwise do and to add great value to each hero's characterisation. In my opinion, in fact, sounds should primarily focus on characterising the heroes themselves and bringing in the game a bit of their iconic essence (conveyed by particular passages and references to the lore), instead of fitting necessarily to fixed gameplay situations. That's why I would rather have Haldir talk briefly about the Dwarves (hinting at the known bonds/rivalries between the two races in Arda's history), rather than lines which would eventually end up being too neutral in significance (I think).

Of course, if there are evident problematics, it's always possible to propose better adjustments to suit actions and relative sounds more coherently.

[Fredius]

Not all the voice actors were from the movie ofcourse.

The problem with the current lines are not necessarily the quotes they say, but the fact that a lot of them have noises or music playing in the background, which disturbs the music or other sounds of the actual game itself. Also hearing the same quotes a thousand times, and hearing those same quotes again in the movie is quite boring and doesn't make them special anymore, don't you think?

Furthermore, judging from what I have seen in the INI files and what I have heard in-game, the amount of lines for specific situations is far less at the moment than it was in vanilla. A lot of heroes only have specific lines for walking, selecting the hero or attacking, and using these same lines for the other situations. Vanilla had specific lines for going back to the camp, retreating from battle, garissoning a tower or other building, charging (a specific line when you attack a unit for the first time), and lines for selecting him/her during the battle. At the same time the amount of lines for walking or attacking was much more than what we have now.

You would rather have Haldir calmy talk 5 minutes about his relationsip with Dwarves during a fight with orcs, than having him say to hold the lines in a way that should motivate his troops? Or when Erebor Dain says "Where is Thorin??", when Thorin is obviously dead? How is that even fitting to the game?

Last argument against this is how much size the amount of English lines take in the mod. The voice_english.big file has all the English lines for the mod, and is almost 800 mb! If we were to use the sounds from vanilla the size of the mod would decrease drastically, and if I'm not mistaken this would have impact on the performance of the game as well, meaning less lag and stuff.

I'm planning to change this for personal use anyway, so I really don't mind what we have now, but if this gets enough support, and the team is willing to change this, then I volunteer to take this task on me.

[Julio229]

It would also get boring if we listened to the same generic lines a lot of time, I think it is more interesting to listen to their movie quotes. With Erebor Dáin, you could imagine he is talking about his son Thorin III, I thought it was a bit strange until then. I don't know, I like listening to movie quotes, it makes the game feel so alive, it feels like you are actually playing with Haldir and not with some guy with his looks that talks in a generic way and with another voice (My game is the Spanish one, he hasn't got the movie voice actor if I remember correctly). It is so strange to use Sam in Lothlorien with original movie quotes and then having Frodo with some voice that doesn't really belong to him. Just my opinion, though.

Edit: About Vanilla having more quotes, if I remember correctly, I sometimes listen to Aragorn or others suddenly changing to their Spanish voice when returning to Camp, so they're not entirely out.

I agree that having Haldir talk about Dwarves while fighting Orcs can be strange, but I think it brings more life to the game than "Hold the lines!" "Shoot them!" or generic lines like that.

[Fredius]

Makes me wonder though, why are you playing your game in Spanish if you want to hear the English voice actors? I don't find it a strong argument if you want to hear the English voice actors in a Spanish version, while you could play the English version and actually hear that many of them have the voices of the original voice actors.

From IMDB I can see that a lot of heroes (particularly all Hobbits, so also Frodo) are voiced by their oiginal actors: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412935/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast, and the rest comes pretty close to the voice of the original actor if you played the English version. Though I'm mainly talking about bfme1, bfme2's voices of Arwen or Haldir don't really come close to the original ones, but I personally  don't really mind. In my opinion the quality and appropriateness of the voice comes first. I don't really care about movie quotes, if I want to hear movie quotes I can just watch the movie .

[Julio229]

I believe the Spanish version cannot be in English language or have English quotes IIRC, and that's the one I bought back when it came out.

Even if my game was in English, I'd still want movie quotes because they are unique, unless the BFMEII ones. I get bored of the generic quotes more than I get right now of movie quotes, and I don't like the ones that have different voices at all.

I agree on what you said before that some of them have noises or music, but most of them are flawless in my opinion.

EDIT: I've looked in the BFMEII IMDB page, and neither Boromir, Legolas, Aragorn, Théoden, Faramir, Éowyn or Éomer have their original voices. What's more, Aragorn and Éomer are voiced by the same person. It's not that the acting is bad, it's more that I'd like to have Viggo Mortensen actually voicing Aragorn like in the mod, so that's one of the reasons I prefer movie quotes.

[Hamanathnath]

I actually like the use of the movie quotes in this mod.  Sure, some of them are repetetive, but I'd rather listen to them then the generic, and sometimes poorly acted, lines made for Bfme and Bfme2. 

Now I will say that certain characters need a exalted soundset, mainly Aragorn and his constant talk about the Nazgul, but most of the soundsets right now are fine in my opinion.

Also, I kinda like how Dain says "Where's Thorin?".  Obviously, in the movie he is talking about Thorin Oakenshield, but out of context, he could also be talking about his son, Thorin III, which is a coincidence that I like.

[Rivi]

Agree entirely with OP

[Walküre]

Not all the voice actors were from the movie ofcourse.

So, I remembered correctly then. This could be one potential negative argument, as I recall that not all voices were of a so great quality (conceptually speaking).

Obviously, both the two choices present disadvantages and have their own flaws, and the fact that it's not possible to have mixed sound sets from different sources puts us in front of a clear choice: that is, the vanilla lines or the iconic ones from the LOTR trilogy. And everytime you make a choice, you necessarily renounce something as an inexorable implication.

Regarding the points you raised, you are right; those are very known technical issues which we can't do anything but accept (unless someone has professional skills in sound-editing). As I wrote, each hero's lines had better serve well for characterisation purposes, even though they might risk to result unfitting to certain gameplay contexts (I guess that units already have proper lines for military strategy aspects). Furthermore, having myself collected some sounds for heroes (Galadriel, Elrond, Thranduil and Dáin) and ordered them in accordance to their actions, I can assure you that the most prominent characters, at least, do have enough differentiated tracks at the moment (30-40). The centre of my reasoning is thus entirely based on the cinematographic feeling, that I absolutely deem paramount.

In the end, I believe that benefits outnumber all the negative sides you mentioned in regards of the trilogy's content. Henceforth, I would gladly have Haldir say that, Elrond address the Fellowship of the Ring or Galadriel narrate the lore of the Rings of Power, instead of 'Courage, Elven friends' or 'Destroy the citadel!' 

[Fredius]

Well, I guess it's just a matter of personal taste. There is no better option here I believe, because one prioritizes the quality and appropriateness of the lines over cinematographic feeling, while the other prioritizes it the other way around. I will just change this for myself then (and perhaps do a submod if I feel like doing it and having the team's permission).

[Walküre]

Well, I guess it's just a matter of personal taste. There is no better option here I believe, because one prioritizes the quality and appropriateness of the lines over cinematographic feeling, while the other prioritizes it the other way around.

Correct. Matters involving purely personal tastes are unfortunately not so resolutive to be dealt with compromises, as it may instead happen in other suggestions. Just like Good and Evil fighting eternally for the dominion of Arda 

No, apart from joking, I don't want to break your wings even more, Fred, but there is another aspect I previously forgot to mention (which we are already well acquainted with); one aside from our interesting debate. The common (quite strict) custom in sound proposals is trying to have English tracks correspond exactly to their German counterparts (from the same source and, possibly, the same line itself). If one is then to go back to the vanilla version (or just implement some of its elements), that would theoretically happen for both languages equally; and, as you pointed out, the German sounds were exactly based on the films to stick loyally to that atmosphere.

Anyway, many good wishes for any project you might want to develop. And thank you very much for your usual helping/volunteering activities and overall spirit 

[Fredius]

I don't want to break your wings even more, Fred

You hurt me Walk .

[...]but there is another aspect I previously forgot to mention (which we are already well acquainted with); one aside from our interesting debate. The common (quite strict) custom in sound proposals is trying to have English tracks correspond exactly to their German counterparts (from the same source and, possibly, the same line itself). If one is then to go back to the vanilla version (or just implement some of its elements), that would theoretically happen for both languages equally; and, as you pointed out, the German sounds were exactly based on the films to stick loyally to that atmosphere.

Well... not necessarily. I remember FG saying that he didn't know that some voice actors in the English version were the same as the original actors, and the reason that they changed the voices was because none of the German voices were of the original voice actors. It was not because of the atmosphere like you said, but because of the voice actors, those are two different things. He also asked the names of the heroes whom had the original voice actors from the movie, so that he could change them for the English version (in which no one replied). In the German forums there are also users who contribute soundsets without having to worry for the English versions. This means that the criteria for soundsets is not as strict as you thought Walk .

[Walküre]

I think you probably didn't get my point so correctly.

I remember FG saying that he didn't know that some voice actors in the English version were the same as the original actors, and the reason that they changed the voices was because none of the German voices were of the original voice actors. It was not because of the atmosphere like you said, but because of the voice actors, those are two different things.

I don't agree. That sole explanation wouldn't be so exhaustive and reasonable by itself. I regard the two things highly complementary: it's quite evident that the very voices of the LOTR actors recreate the whole cinematographic atmosphere a good deal better, replacing the vanilla lines (of which some were too much cheesy). I don't claim to know the original intentions of the Edain Team back in the beginning of their modding days, but that tight relationship films-sounds is objectively the most logical overview of the issue. One of the primary aims of the Edain Mod is in fact getting the closest possible to the books and to the trilogies (as for the latter, images and sounds are the perfect means via which one can achieve that). I can't honestly see them as two separate aspects at all.

Regarding those 'rules', I believe I worded my sentences as much accurately as I could to convey the idea that they are not inviolable boundaries. That's why I talked about 'quite strict customs' that had better be respected whenever you possibly may do it. As I stated earlier, I myself worked on sounds and I clearly remember that some packages of tracks were rejected for the reasons I referred to. As far as I remember, it was Ealendril that once recommended us take those guidelines into careful consideration when it's possible; if we are dealing with exceptional cases, it's obvious that those indications may be avoided. I think German users are more likely to 'care less' about the two-language issue because, in many cases, new German sound proposals are generally the first ones to be conceived, and then suitable transpositions for the English version are found; not to mention that German sound sets themselves have existed for much longer than the English ones (collected mostly by fans' initiatives).

Nevertheless, set aside who said what, my remark was primarily relating to the context debated here. If you seek for such changes, that would inevitably imply that those said changes should apply to both versions. We can't have one version following major guidelines (with significant consequences for the game's essence) and the other one taking a completely different path. It would just be like two people in a canoe, each rowing in the opposite direction of the other: not really the most favourable scenario